Song Of Time (19 page)

“You should get drunk more often,” he said, laughing as he helped me up. “You’re terrific at it. You might even get the hang of dancing. All you need to do is open up, let go.”

“You’re not so very bad yourself. I’m not drunk. Or not very.”

“At least we can agree on something…”

Then we were rattling upwards in a gated lift inside some kind of warehouse, no, it was an apartment, although the space it occupied was huge.

“You
live
here?”

“Sure. Why not? What else would anyone do with it?”

He helped me towards a sprawl of sheets, and I fell towards them, then curled up and groaned as the girdered roof started to revolve. I was dimly conscious of Claude moving about in the far reaches of this space. Things tinkled. Distant drawers slid. I covered my head.

“I’m sure I’ve got some soberups somewhere.”

“No. It’s okay,” I muttered. “I’ll be fine.”

“I shouldn’t have given you so much wine.”

“No…It’s…”

“Here. Take this.”

Then, almost instantly, it was morning and I could hear that Claude was up and about. The sheets which I was lying in smelled gingery and sweetish— more of me than of him—and I realised that I was still entirely dressed, right down to my shoes, although I wasn’t sure whether this was a good or a bad sign. I risked cracking open my eyes. Light blazed, and whole aeons slid by before I tried opening them again. For once, the Parisian rain seemed to have stopped, and the many tall windows which surrounded this huge and approximately rectangular atelier were filled with a mist which wasn’t pulsing simply because of the state of my head. All the adverts for porn and online virtualities were throwing their messages even through a cloudbase so low it filled this room. Reds and pinks and yellows shifted and faded. Plumes of darker pixels tunnelled and leapt…

And music was playing. Of course music was playing. With Claude back then, music always was playing. What I’d come to recognise as
So What?
from Miles Davis’
Kind of Blue
was pouring out from his expensive sound system with such baffling clarity that it took me a while to work out that the players weren’t actually there. Not that I knew or cared about mid-Twentieth Century jazz then, but even my ignorant ears picked up on the fact that this was playing of a quite exceptional order, although I was far more conscious of Claude himself. He was naked, and dancing as if he’d never stopped since last night. Clapping, he threw his head back and laughed in happy amazement as one of the soloists executed a particularly beautiful hairpin turn. There was a piano, a big old Bechstein, and every now and then he’d slip sideways through the glowing mist to jab a note in response to something he’d heard. Even though he was competing with Bill Evans, it was all perfectly judged. Claude’s fine long body shone and rippled with the changing colours, and he had an erection which bobbed and circled against his belly as it, too, executed its own mutual but independent dance. He looked so entirely lovely that even my ghastly hangover seemed to subside. Then he noticed that I was awake and wafted over just at the moment Coltrane’s immortal solo kicked in.

“Hi there.” He was completely unselfconscious. “Sorry if I woke you.”

“No…It’s…”I managed to roll over and look up at him, although I couldn’t bring myself to say
fine
.

“You slept okay?”

“I’m not sure.” I shaded my eyes. Mist roiled. His cock shone.

“Oh—this—” He glanced down at himself. “It’s what happens when you awake if you’re a man—it’s just dreams.”

I swallowed. Despite how I felt, he really did look delicious. And the music was fading, and I wanted him down here in this bed with me.

“You’re not dreaming now,” I said, opening my arms as if to welcome him to me in all my fully clothed glory before a sudden wave of nausea enveloped me and I vomited copiously across his sheets. Would I have loved Claude Vaudin without the glamour of him being who he then was, and without the music? But that’s impossible to say— he simply wouldn’t have
been
Claude Vaudin then. Raised in Georgetown, Washington DC, by wealthy, liberal academics, moving from the first amid virtuality stars, musicians and ambassadors, there was never any doubt about his talent, nor that he would make the most of it. So it was Phi Beta Kappa and summer camps and Princeton and Juilliard and winning Leeds and the prix d’Excellence and getting the Licentiate and turning down offers from Berlin and San Francisco to become youngest ever principal conductor at the Orchestra du Paris. None of the early worries which had beset Leo about whether to be a performer or a composer, or whether to go for pop or classical or jazz, and then whether it was possible for a mere artist to influence the world. He could do all of these things.

Only the insecure are arrogant. Only the less than exceptional care about what others think. Back then, back in Paris, Claude possessed the generosity and humility of the truly great. Sure, there were tantrums and yelling fits and the odd cancellation. Sure, there were occasional fluffed notes and people he didn’t get on with and nights playing the piano at
Le Chien Heureux
or conducting when the music didn’t flow in the way we all knew it should, but genius, as I began to understand, is the enemy of perfection. To get it beautifully right, you have to be prepared to get it terribly wrong. And you have to learn how to dance, as well.

Claude chuckled. His hands shaped my breasts as the glowing sky uncoiled and shadows of the rain trickled with the sweat along his flanks.

“Stand up…” His arms enfolded me. Sinatra’s singing was even fresher than it had been on the coolest of all possible midnights when it was made. “Just move…Just sway…” His hands were on my belly, my hips. His reawakening cock nudged my thigh. Was this sex, or was this dancing? “Listen to the music. Don’t hang up on me now—just listen to what the man says.” I felt the glide of his fingers. “Under your skin. Hum to it. Sing to it. Feel it in your blood.” Now he’d shifted, and was standing behind me. He led me with the sway of his hips. “Does that hurt?”

“No—yes, it does now. A little.”

“But not too much?”

“…no.”

“Don’t worry. Relax—just let it in…”

Outside, Paris streamed with rain and colour, endlessly falling away.

Playing was letting go. Playing was bum notes and missed intros. Playing was letting exhilaration or weariness or the sweat-slide of your aching fingers lead you to some new and unexpected place. Playing was for the moment or it was nothing at all, and it didn’t matter if a million people listened or you performed alone in the depths of a forest. If you played selfishly and without caring, if you played completely for the sake of yourself and didn’t care about everything else—then, there was just a chance that you might get it gloriously right…

Music was holier than sex to Claude, and it was holier than dancing, although it must be said that all these activities often grew so blurred as we drank and played and listened and danced and fucked and talked and listened and played and danced and fucked again through that delirious spring in our atelier above the Boulevard de Clichy on the fringes of Montmartre that they became one. Then we would go out into the hailstone spring of this newly awakened Paris. We ate Indian or we ate Chinese or we ate Kurdish or we ate nothing at all and merely drank and talked, and artists of all persuasions and senses would join us from gardens of the Gare de l’Est. For wasn’t that Claude Vaudin, and isn’t that Roushana Maitland? Even before I realised what was happening, we’d become the couple of the hour.

It was all so quick, so giddy. One day, I’m a promising but obscure soloist. The next, I’m doing interviews, virtuality shoots for
Le Monde
, and, through a series of suspiciously convenient cancellations, Claude has arranged for me to perform the Sibelius Concerto for a stellar benefit at the Opéra for one of his many charitable causes.

I remember a day when we were sitting in a café after a long and somewhat grumpy rehearsal session at the old radio buildings. Claude, as ever, had much to say.

“Forget all the crap people talk about Sibelius, Roushana. Forget all the rubbish about fjords and Nordic gods and forests and snow and polar bears dancing. That isn’t what he’s about. Imagine he’s Spanish, if that helps. Think how
hot
his music is, not how cold—”

Then the door from the street bashed open and a white-faced figure with a Hitlerish cowlick of hair shook off the rain from his grubby coat.

“Ah—” he hissed in off-accented English, ignoring Claude and pointing directly at me “—you’re that
musician
, aren’t you? The one who plays…” His bloodshot eyes bulged. “…what is it, the fucking fiddle, the bloody violin?”

I shot Claude a look in the hope that we might manage the sort of escape we were starting to specialise in. But Claude just sat there, and— after a series of volcanic sneezes which, after this winter of pandemics, soon had the other habitués of the café shifting away—this odd little man dragged across a chair to sit with us.

“No, I don’t want anything.” He snapped at the waiter. “Just bring another glass, okay?” He wiped his nose with the back of his hand, then smeared his hand down his trousers. He smelled like an ill, wet dog. “You know who I am, don’t you?”

I shook my head.

“Well—” Claude leaned in, but our guest banged the table.

“I’m not
that
idiot. And you’re two love birds, isn’t that the latest trick, the new gimmick?” His breath and his smile as he leant towards me were equally sickly. Beneath the table, I had to jerk away my leg as his hand grabbed my thigh. “The best way to prostitute yourselves to the stupid public is by pretending to be everything you’re not.”

“So you always say, Karl,” muttered Claude, who seemed to be taking this with surprising tolerance.

Again, the man thumped the table. His wineglass leapt. “I told you. No bloody, bloody names.” He turned to me as spilled wine dripped into his lap. “So—are you going to change the world of music, is that your game? Or are you just hanging around with Claude so that you can fuck and get drunk and have your own measly slice of fame?”

“I don’t see that I have to justify myself to you. Whoever you are—”

“
Whoever
! Ha! That’s rich.” He laughed, and the laugh turned to phlegmish hawk. He spat, narrowly missing me and the table. “And I suppose you know all about doing
good
. Have you seen—what’s it called, Claude—” He tilted his head. “The something something for music something?”

“The Project? Is that what you mean?”

He didn’t bother to nod. “Taking in those North African kids. Saving them from the sex traders and the cults. And for what…” Leeringly, he mimicked the playing of a violin. “Do you expect them to make a living doing
that
? Do you expect them to live at all? They’d all be so much better off being whipped, sodomised or sacrificed in the name of whatever deity happens to be the craze of the moment. And they’d be better at it as well…That’s what young flesh is for, or didn’t you realise? It’s there to be maltreated before it loses its elasticity and goes old and wrinkled and sour.”

It was quite a performance. Soon we were the only people left in the café, and I was almost beginning to understand Claude’s complaisance in the face of this seemingly unstoppable tirade, although not quite why we were still putting up with it.

“Anyway, who are you?” I asked. “You still haven’t said.”

“My Christ…” Spreading his arms, he looked at the bottle-hung ceiling as if pleading for help. “…the stuck up little cunt still wants to know.” Then, just as suddenly as he arrived, he stood up, glared around at the empty café, and staggered back out into the rain.

Claude began to smile as the door ceased swinging. Then he started to laugh. “You
really
don’t who that is, Roushana?”

“No—and you’re starting to sound like him!”

“I’m sorry…” He blinked and regathered himself. “That was Karl Nordinger, the world’s greatest composer. You should count yourself extraordinarily lucky that you’ve met him.”

It was teeming rain and freezing cold, but Paris was warming—Paris was hot. I jammed with Claude at the Le Chien Heureux. I learned how to trade fours, and how to mess things up. I listened to Grappelli, and discovered—instead of merely knowing about—rock and jazz. At night, we lay awake half-drunk or half-dreaming, floating in some strange equilibrium on a cocktail of soberups, wakeups, upups and downers, our limbs so closely entwined that I often didn’t know whether it was my flesh or his that I was licking. It was lovely and sinful and onanistic—we even tasted the same. I played the
Ciaccona
for him. I told him about Leo, and my lost baby, and he told me about the women and men he’d had—and, yes, Tiger-Stripe Jill as well—and how he wanted none of them now.
Just you, Roushana….Just this…
Claude danced. Shamelessly, he did things for me alone, and I did things for him.

There were endless parties. There was a cold snap. Briefly, the Seine froze. Then, suddenly, the mornings were wreathed in sunlight and steam. And we were busking in Montmartre, and coming up quite spontaneously with that tune which everyone in Paris was soon humming, or walking along the Champs Elysées where the fashion dummies writhed like the figures at
Le Chien Heureux
. Then along the Boulevard de Clichy, and watching the whores in all their enhanced finery, and inspecting, amazed and curious, all the many devices and appliances on sale in the shops. Up the hill in Montmartre there were other tempta-tions. We ate
hombard persillé
and drank
pastis
for lunch. These sloping streets had become fashionable once again, and were filled with exotic emporia and antique shops. We debated whether this cabinet by Gallé wouldn’t just fill the far corner of our atelier, or if that crystal scent bottle really was a Lalique. I watched our reflections move in the glass cases and mirrors: Claude, in his red scarf and black coat, the pulse in his throat and the crease which gathered in his left cheek when he smiled, and the way he and I somehow just
matched
. I’d always thought all those operas and musicals about falling in love were essentially ridiculous, a mere artistic device, but now I understood why, even in these moments of seemingly everyday life, people might want to burst into song.